8
In the Attic
The first night she spent in her attic was a thing Sara never forgot. During its
passing she lived through a wild, unchildlike woe of which she never spoke to
anyone about her. There was no one who would have understood. It was, indeed,
well for her that as she lay awake in the darkness her mind was forcibly
distracted, now and then, by the strangeness of her surroundings. It was, perhaps,
well for her that she was reminded by her small body of material things. If this
had not been so, the anguish of her young mind might have been too great for a
child to bear. But, really, while the night was passing she scarcely knew that she
had a body at all or remembered any other thing than one.
"My papa is dead!" she kept whispering to herself. "My papa is dead!"It was not until long afterward that she realized that her bed had been so hard
that she turned over and over in it to find a place to rest, that the darkness
seemed more intense than any she had ever known, and that the wind howled
over the roof among the chimneys like something which wailed aloud. Then
there was something worse. This was certain scufflings and scratchings and
squeakings in the walls and behind the skirting boards. She knew what they
meant, because Becky had described them. They meant rats and mice who were
either fighting with each other or playing together. Once or twice she even heard
sharp-toed feet scurrying across the floor, and she remembered in those after
days, when she recalled things, that when first she heard them she started up in
bed and sat trembling, and when she lay down again covered her head with the
bedclothes.
The change in her life did not come about gradually, but was made all at
once.
"She must begin as she is to go on," Miss Minchin said to Miss Amelia. "She
must be taught at once what she is to expect."
Mariette had left the house the next morning. The glimpse Sara caught of her
sitting room, as she passed its open door, showed her that everything had been